On this week’s episode of On Contact, host Chris Hedges examines the future of the American empire under the Trump Administration with investigative journalist Allan Nairn. RT Correspondent Anya Parampil looks at the global reach of the American military.

Obama’s global terror campaign is not only dependent upon his drone assassination program, but increasingly it has come to rely upon the deployment of Special Operations forces in countries all over the world, reportedly between 70 and 120 countries at any one time. As Obama has sought to draw down the large-scale ground invasions of countries (as Bush pursued in Afghanistan and Iraq), he has escalated the world of ‘covert warfare,’ largely outside the oversight of Congress and the public. Continue reading →

A full-scale invasion of Africa is under way. The United States is deploying troops in 35 African countries, beginning with Libya, Sudan, Algeria and Niger. Reported by Associated Press on Christmas Day, this was missing from most Anglo-American media.

The invasion has almost nothing to do with “Islamism”, and almost everything to do with the acquisition of resources, notably minerals, and an accelerating rivalry with China. Unlike China, the US and its allies are prepared to use a degree of violence demonstrated in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Palestine. Continue reading →

On June 15 the news agency of the U.S. Defense Department, American Forces Press Service, ran a story on commander of U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) Army General Carter Ham’s testimony before the House Armed Services Committee four months before in which he which averred that last year’s war against Libya “imparted important lessons” for the Pentagon’s newest regional military command.

As the U.S. begins to wind down more than ten consecutive years of combat, mainly counterinsurgency, operations in what has variously been labeled the Broader, Greater and New Middle East, war-tested troops are being prepared for redeployment to Africa and Latin (largely South) America.

Last September President Barack Obama hailed the five million U.S. soldiers that have served in the so-called global war on terror, what he called the 9/11 generation, in the preceding decade.

Uganda is undoubtedly rife with resources for Obama, Sarkozy, Cameron, et. al. to plunder, otherwise why would a viral film like Kony 2012 be popping up on YouTube? And the unwitting, or perhaps even duplicitously savvy shill’s film — and its Hollywood accomplices — are certainly making ample headlines. The ostensible end of the viral YouTube picture, would appear to be pressing for yet another “humanitarian” intervention. After all AFRICOM is still based in Stuttgart, Germany, so the US and its partners, are undoubtedly pining away for another place, to base their banefulness and multifarious tools of mass destruction.

A fellow writer tells me that she feels overwhelmed by events and I feel the same way. An awful sense of deja vu that we have as much chance of stopping the march to total war as they had in the 1930s. Except that this time it will not be us citizens of Empire who are on the receiving end of Western industrial-scale murder and pillage. The world’s first colonial world war, with the haves pitted against the have-nots. As I have remarked before, without a non-capitalist alternative to not only reign in some of the ‘excesses’ of capitalism but also curtail its relentless expansion, the world is essentially defenceless.

The press wires are reporting on intensified fighting in Mali between the nation’s military and ethnic Tuareg rebels of the Azawad National Liberation Movement in the north of the nation.

As the only news agencies with global sweep and the funds and infrastructure to maintain bureaus and correspondents throughout the world are those based in leading member states of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization – the Associated Press, Reuters, Agence France-Presse, BBC News and Deutsche Presse-Agentur – the coverage of ongoing developments in Mali, like those in most every other country, reflects a Western bias and a Western agenda.

On 14 October, President Barack Obama announced he was sending United States special forces troops to Uganda to join the civil war there. In the next few months, US combat troops will be sent to South Sudan, Congo and Central African Republic. They will only “engage” for “self-defence”, says Obama, satirically. With Libya secured, an American invasion of the African continent is under way.

Pepe Escobar returns to our show to discuss the ever-changing, constantly-shifting, and holes-filled script in the US raid that allegedly killed Osama bin Laden. He reports on the news accounts on the Arab uprising in Egypt and the rarely reported realities of the Libya War, the conflicted responses of the United States to the uprising in Egypt and Libya versus those in other places such as Bahrain and Tunisia, and the hypocritical stand on Saudi Arabia. Continue reading →

The war by major North Atlantic Treaty Organization member states against Libya is in its third month and has been conducted under the official auspices of NATO for the past fifty days.

According to the military bloc’s daily online tally [1], Alliance military aircraft have flown over 7,200 missions and more than 2,800 combat flights since NATO inaugurated so-called Operation Unified Protector on March 31.

Libya: Let us not be confused as to why Libya alone has been singled out for “humanitarian intervention”.

On April 9, Condoleezza Rice delivered a talk in San Francisco. Or tried to. The former Secretary of State was interrupted repeatedly by cries from the audience of “war criminal” and “torturer”. (For which we can thank our comrades in Code Pink and World Can’t Wait.) As one of the protesters was being taken away by security guards, Rice made the kind of statement that has now become standard for high American officials under such circumstances: Continue reading →

The African strategy; five goals of the US war against Libya; the five principles of war propaganda; NATO as the policeman of the world; Africom; Gaddafi’s rein in Libya; the Libyan opposition; Israel; Yemen and Bahrain; Eritrea; geostrategic importance of the Indian Ocean; global war on terrorism; indicators of US decline.

Post navigation

The Senate voted to save net neutrality. Now we need the House of Representatives to do the same, or else the FCC will let ISPs like Comcast and Verizon ruin the internet with throttling, censorship and unnecessary fees. Click the image below to write to Congress.

Translate

Operation: #OneMoreVote

The FCC voted to repeal net neutrality, letting internet providers like Verizon and Comcast impose new fees, throttle bandwidth, and censor online content. But we can stop them by using the Congressional Review Act (CRA). We need one more vote to win in the Senate, and we’re launching an Internet-wide push to get it.

The Golden Rule

“That which is hateful to you do not do to another ... the rest (of the Torah) is all commentary, now go study.” - Rabbi Hillel

Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Disclaimer:

The views and/or opinions posted on all the blog posts and in the comment sections are of their respective authors, not necessarily those of Dandelion Salad.
All content has been used with permission from the copyright owners, who reserve all rights, and that for uses outside of fair use (an excerpt), permission must be obtained from the respective copyright owner.
Republishing entire blog posts isn't OK without contacting Dandelion Salad first and asking permission. Please use the "Press This" button at the end of the blog post if you'd like to reblog an excerpt. Thanks.